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A heavy cloak of surrealism encapsulates the negotiations the Obama administration is conducting with Iran over the latter’s nuclear enrichment program. Though the premise of the diplomatic negotiations being spearheaded by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is to permit Iran to retain a substantial uranium enrichment program so long as the Iranian nuclear project is “peaceful,” there is a clear consensus by senior members of America’s intelligence community, past and present, that Iran’s nuclear activities are solely geared towards eventual weapons production. An example of that viewpoint was expressed recently by the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Morell.

In a February interview with Charlie Rose on Bloomberg TV, the former CIA deputy director, commenting on leaks indicating that the Obama administration proposed to allow Tehran to retain more than 6,000 functioning centrifuges utilized for uranium enrichment, said “If you are going to have a nuclear weapons program, 5,000 is pretty much the number you need.” Morell added, “If you have a power program, you need a lot more. By limiting them to a small number of centrifuges, we are limiting them to the number you need for a weapon.” (http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/25/michael-morell/odd-reality-irans-centrifuges-enough-bomb-not-powe/) In the same interview, the former number two man at the CIA stated that he is convinced that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has already made a decision to acquire nuclear weapons capability, most probably through an undetected covert program. (https://archive.org/details/BLOOMBERG_20150219_000000_Charlie_Rose#start/2640/end/2700)

Having made the leap in recognizing that Iran’s claimed “peaceful” nuclear project is without question a weapons program, functioning alongside Tehran’s large-scale ballistic missile development and production project, the intelligence experts, including Michael Morell, provide explanations for the motivation behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program deeply rooted in Western concepts, including regime preservation and enhancing Iranian hegemony in the Middle East. In my view, this is a mistaken approach, because it is based solely on speculation from analysts schooled in secular geopolitical theories.

I offer a dissenting view on the purpose of Iran’s nuclear weapons project, which is based on what the supreme leader of Iran has communicated to his own Iranian constituents. On July 9, 2011 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a speech to teachers and graduates of Mahdaviat, a term referring to the belief in Shia Islam in the return of the 12th Imam or Mahdi, an eschatological figure that will supposedly herald in an era of global Islamic justice through an apocalyptic annihilation of the present world order. The speech the supreme leader delivered is extraordinary in its content, and can be viewed on YouTube, complete with English subtitles (http://youtu.be/MtzvMkV3V-g). What is most striking about Khamenei’s discourse is that the most senior political leader of a geographically complex nation of 80 million people, with major economic and social challenges, spoke for more than twenty minutes without a single reference to the myriad of secular issues confronting Iran. The entirety of the speech delivered by the supreme leader of Iran was devoted to the return of the 12th Imam as the Mahdi from a state of occultation. He closed his address with the following words: “I hope we will be among his followers both when he is in occultation and when he re-appears. By Allah’s favor, we will be among the soldiers who will fight alongside Imam Mahdi and I hope we will be martyred for his cause.”

In the second decade of the 21st century it staggers the Western mind to have to intellectually confront a nation-state conducting its policy for a theological and possibly eschatological purpose. However, based on what Iran’s supreme leader has clearly communicated is his top priority, namely the martyrdom of the Iranian people for the sake of the return of the 12th Imam, the possible connection of Tehran’s nuclear weapons project with the theological agenda of that nation’s rulers should not be discounted by policymakers in Washington. The Obama administration and the State Department may find it inconceivable that a nation in our contemporary world would create a vast uranium enrichment capability, much of it at hardened or underground locations, for the objective of bringing about an apocalyptic event that will set the stage for the return of the 12th Imam. However, ignoring the words of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and transposing our own Western concepts on how we perceive Iran’s motivation for creating its nuclear project is a perilous course for America and the world to pursue.

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There are growing indications that the Obama administration will sign a nuclear agreement with Iran that will allow Tehran to become a nuclear-threshold state. It seems the only issue being contested at present is the extent of the cosmetic and temporary concessions the Iranians will grant so that Iran does not fully emerge as a nuclear weapons state until after the expiration of the Obama presidency. The disarming body language and genuine warmth that characterizes the public interaction between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Minster of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif seems to point in that direction, belying the fact that these two nations have not had diplomatic relations for 35 years because the government of one of those states ordered its armed thugs to attack and seize the embassy of the other nation, in the most flagrant violation of international law, holding its diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Of course, Barack Obama has promised on more than one occasion that he would never permit Iran to become a nuclear armed state. Then again, this is the same President Obama who warned Syria’s president not to use poison gas on his own people, or there would be consequences for crossing that red line. And let us not forget the President’s assurances that the war in Iraq was over and it was safe to withdraw all U.S. forces, or that the emerging Islamic State was nothing more than a “jayvee team” or that Yemen was a great success story for America’s anti-terrorism strategy–the same Yemen where Washington was recently forced to close its embassy after a coup in that country staged by anti-American rebels loyal to Iran.

The consequences involved in permitting Iran to become a nuclear weapons state are, obviously, far more consequential. Barack Obama is not the first president confronting a rogue regime about to acquire nuclear weapons capability. In the early 1990s, evidence mounted that North Korea was embarking on a nuclear weapons program. As with President Obama, then President Clinton pledged to the American people that the North Korean regime would never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons. Then former President Jimmy Carter came to the rescue. He flew to North Korea, met with the reigning dictator and laid the groundwork for what became the 1994 Agreed Framework treaty, which supposedly froze North Korea’s attempt to develop atomic weapons through plutonium production in exchange for U.S. economic aid. However, the treaty collapsed after Clinton left office when U.S. intelligence learned that North Korea had cheated on the agreement by secretly developing a uranium enrichment program as an alternative path towards developing nuclear bombs. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first test detonation of a nuclear bomb.

It appears that the Obama administration is following in the path originally set by President Clinton. In addition to tolerating a vast nuclear enrichment facility, much of it underground, that can only have been established for the eventual mass production of nuclear bombs to mate with Tehran’s increasingly powerful and longer-range ballistic missiles, the current administration has been passive in the face of Iran’s growing hegemony in the Middle East, as witnessed by Tehran’s virtual occupation of Lebanon through its proxy militia, its massive intervention in the Syrian civil war on the side of Bashar al-Assad, and increasing military involvement and control in Iraq and the recent pro-Iranian coup in Yemen. This passivity is inexplicable, considering the potential and dire strategic and economic consequences for the United States.

What about the character of the regime that President Obama and his national security team seem about to trust with the most destructive weapons on earth? Amid the long list of Iranian terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its interests aboard unleashed by Tehran since 1979, there is one which, more than any other, defines the essence of the regime of the Ayatollahs and its contempt for the United States.

In 1984 the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, was kidnapped by the Iranian controlled Hezbollah militia. The fate of William Buckley was disclosed by Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson in an article published the following year (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1979&dat=19851210&id=ZqUiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1a0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3231,8626261). According to Anderson, who based his account on confidential sources within the U.S. intelligence community, Buckley was smuggled into Iran, and subjected to numerous bouts of brutal interrogation under barbaric torture in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry, the same building being presided over today by John Kerry’s Iranian counterpart, Zarif. The barbarous torture eventually induced a heart attack, leading to the death of Buckley. As Jack Anderson stated in his article, Iran was responsible for the horrific murder under torture of an American patriot.

President Obama seems determined to move forward on a nuclear agreement with the regime that tortured and murdered William Buckley. He should reflect on how this dedicated CIA agent must have felt, abandoned by his government and alone with his Iranian torturers, enduring a hellish nightmare in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry. Is the nation William Buckley died for now about to be abandoned, for the sake of a presidential legacy?

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Only three months after being elected as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rouhani addressed the U.N. General Assembly, in the process arousing once moribund hope that the Iranian nuclear issue can be resolved peacefully. In his speech delivered on September 24, 2013, Rouhani echoed many of the same words that had been uttered before by his bombastic predecessor, Ahmadinejad; Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful, and exists solely for the purpose of generating electricity, and Iran insists on its “fundamental right” to enrich uranium for “peaceful purposes.” He also repeated the credo that not only Ahmadinejad but more importantly Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, has often pronounced; the Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, and such weaponry violates the fundamental principles of the theocratic state’s governing ideology. With a poise and polish totally foreign to Ahmadinejad, Rouhani has accomplished a truly remarkable rebranding of his nation. Largely through one speech, a vortex of diplomatic processes has been launched, with many pundits expressing optimism about the prospect of a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

In the wake of the celebratory praise of Rouhani’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly, can he in fact be believed? Is it indeed possible for Iran to have created a largely covert national uranium enrichment program, vast in its infrastructure and cost, but with that same nation possessing only one barely functioning nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, with no additional ones under construction, while simultaneously enduring painful economic sanctions, solely for the purpose of developing electrical power? Time will tell how sincere Rouhani and his master, Ayatollah AliKhamenei, are in their mutual denial of intentions of developing nuclear weapons and claims of desiring a speedy diplomatic resolution of the crisis. One can hope that Rouhani’s speech manifests a genuine desire to end the grounds for concern about Iran’s nuclear program. However, the history of the last century provides grounds for caution when it comes to deriving the true intentions of a head of state from a policy speech.

On May 21, 1935 the German chancellor and Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, addressed his nation’s Reichstag, with his words recorded by international journalists. Nazi Germany was in the middle of a vast arms buildup. Before disclosing his true ambition of world conquest, it was vital that international public opinion and politicians in Western Europe and the U.S. be lulled into a false sense of calm regarding his ultimate intentions. In a brilliant oratorical performance which one American journalist described as one of the most eloquent calls for peace and disarmament ever spoken, Hitler reassured the international audience he was aiming at that his goals were strictly peaceful:”National Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions… Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.”

The world fell for the reassuring words of Adolf Hitler with a suddenness and completeness that is hard to grasp nearly eighty years later. A typical reaction was an editorial which appeared in the Times of London that proclaimed, “It is to be hoped that the speech will be taken everywhere as a sincere and well-considered utterance, meaning precisely what it says.”

Is history repeating itself, or is the totalitarian regime in Iran being truthful in its claims about the pacific orientation of its nuclear project? After Hitler’s peace speech in 1935, those few who publically warned about the true intentions of Nazi Germany, especially Winston Churchill, were denounced as war mongers. Hopefully, those who have not yet jumped on the Rouhani rebranding bandwagon, and are preaching caution in exploring the possibility that Iran genuinely does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, will be listened to more earnestly than was the case in the 1930s. In judging Iran and the authentic goals of its leadership, it is acts and deeds, not words, that should serve as the ultimate litmus test regarding Tehran’s true intentions.

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An important op-ed piece has appeared in The New York Times regarding the Iranian nuclear issue. Authored by Bill Keller and entitled “Nuclear Mullahs,” the op-ed column does not question the view of all serious actors involved in the issue, which is that Iran’s nuclear program is a weapons program. Rather, Keller focuses on the central policy question connected with Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions; should Tehran acquire a nuclear arsenal, can it be deterred in the manner of the former Soviet Union and United States during the cold war? In the words of Keller, “Why would Iran not be similarly deterred by the certainty that using nuclear weapons would bring a hellish reprisal? “

As the former executive-editor of The New York Times as well as being a current op-ed columnist, Keller’s voice will likely be interpreted as a reflection of mainstream thinking on the Iranian nuclear issue by policymakers who are influenced by his newspaper. The views of The New York Times still carry some weight in certain circles on Capitol Hill, so for that reason the views expressed by Keller are highly relevant. What is it, therefore, that Keller espouses on this menacing issue?

After warning that, “Anyone who has a glib answer to this problem isn’t taking the subject seriously,” Keller than does precisely that.He raises the salient points that have been analyzed by decision makers in several countries concerned with the potential threat posed by Iran being transformed into a nuclear-armed state, then dismisses them with simplistic rationalizations devoid of substance or deep analytical thought. Here are some examples.

Keller accepts that a nuclear-armed Iran would be emboldened to create more mayhem in the Middle East through its puppets, such as Hezbollah, but then quotes a former diplomat who suggests that an Iran deprived of nuclear weapons through military means would be even more meddlesome. On the surface, this is a self-contradicting argument. Then, Keller raises an often-mentioned risk identified by strategic experts; an Iranian nuclear weapon would unleash the proliferation genie, creating a nuclear arms race in a region already beset with instability and political volatility. While acknowledging that Saudi Arabia would seek nuclear arms, and may purchase such weapons from Pakistan (“not a pleasant thought,” muses Keller), he then ignores the implications while dismissing the other Middle East actors ashaving “strong reasons not to join the race,” without specifying those reasons or taking into account the deep Sunni antagonism and fears towards Iran’s Shiite ideology and perceived ambitions for regional dominance.

On the matter of Israel’s perception that a nuclear-armed Iran represents an existential threat, Keller writes, “The regime in Iran is brutal, mendacious and meddlesome, and given to spraying gobbets of Hitleresque bile at the Jewish state.” Yet, Keller in his piece maintains an iconoclastic belief bordering on religious messianism that Iran’s nuclear weapons program cannotpossibly represent a danger of annihilation to Israel. To buttress his conviction, he resorts to claiming that history proves that nuclear-armed states somehow behave more rationally.

The question I would put to Bill Keller is this; would Nazi Germany have behaved more rationally if it had become nuclear-armed? Would Imperial Japan have refrained from attacking Pearl Harbor if it had possessed atomic bombs?

The central flaw in Bill Keller’s op-ed on the Iranian nuclear issue is that it totally ignores the character and substance of the Iranian theocratic regime, its grand strategic vision and world view, and how nuclear weapons fit in with their ideology. This is a barbarous, ruthless regime with extreme ideological imperatives dominating its tactical and strategic thinking. To have hope that acquisition of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction would somehow transform such a regime into a responsible regional actor contradicts all historical parallels. It reminds one of the policy of appeasement adopted by the Western democracies in the 1930s towards Nazi Germany. It was hopedback then that allowing an ideologically driven dictatorship to rearm and expand would somehow moderate its extremist views and lead to more rational behavior. Among the strongest supporters of the policy of appeasement back in the 1930s were the major newspapers of the Western world.

Now, it is The New York Times that is suggesting, through Bill Keller’s piece, that preventative military means be taken off the table in regards to the Iranian nuclear issue. He doesn’t want a nuclear-armed Iran, but is unwilling to use force to prevent such an outcome, and ends his piece with calls for diplomacy and a “Nixon-to-China” moment. As in the 1930s, the world is approaching a moment of truth, and just as back then, important voices within politics and journalism are desperately groping for unattainable answers short of military confrontation, not realizing until it is too late that the diplomatic option with an extremist totalitarian state was illusory.

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In the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s policy of claiming that an Iranian nuclear weapon represents an existential threat has prompted Teheran’s apologists to maintain that Israeli officials exaggerate the danger. In particular, these critics lambaste Israelis for comparing the theocratic clique running Teheran’s government with the regime of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. Such comparisons, argue the critics, are mere hyperbole; the Iranian leaders are rational, and even if they build nuclear weapons (as most experts on nuclear non-proliferation believe is their aim), Iran’s rulers would only use a nuclear arsenal as a “deterrent,” and no other country, including Israel or the Sunni Muslim governments astride the Persian Gulf, need fear an Iranian nuclear attack.

The speech delivered at a recent anti-drug conference in Teheran by Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, jointly sponsored by the United Nations and Iranian government, at which Western diplomats were present, appears to contradict the case for Iranian rationality being offered by the apologists for Iran’s ruling circles. In reporting on the anti-drug conference in Teheran, The New York Times, usually cautious in its headlines, had the following banner description for its report; “Iran’s Vice President Makes Anti-Semitic Speech At Forum.”

Among the tidbits being offered by Vice President Rahimi, second only to President Ahmadinejad in the Iranian government hierarchy, to the stunned Western diplomats and even Iranian officials listening to his diatribe, was the claim that the drug trade was controlled by Jews and Zionists. As proof, Rahimi told the forum, “The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict…They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade.”

The number two man in the Iranian government then went on to tell the supposed U.N. co-sponsored anti-drug conference that Jews and Zionists were responsible for the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which, according to Rahimi, not one Jew died. For good measure, he also added that the Jewish religious text, the Talmud, is a racist document and that “Zionists” have ordered gynecologists to kill black babies.

The words that came out of the mouth of Iran’s vice president could have come from Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister Goebbels in 1938, or from a contemporary neo-Nazi hate pamphlet. That these words reflect the thinking of a top-level government official from a regime that appears to be seeking nuclear weapons capability, even in the face of international sanctions that are crippling to its citizens, should give all sensible people pause. Beyond the argument as to whether or not Iran’s rulers are rational, would allowing such a regime to possess nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that could deliver them to any target in the world really be a rational act on the part of the rest of the world?

When President Barack Obama, flanked by his leadership colleagues attending the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, made his dramatic announcement regarding Iran’s covert second site for uranium processing, he did so with a high degree of credibility. Not wishing to follow the fanciful nuclear allegations made by the Bush administration to justify its invasion of Iraq, President Obama and his advisors deliberated for several months with the U.S. intelligence community before being persuaded of the true purpose underlying a secretive underground facility being constructed by the Iranian regime outside the holy city of Qom.

The carefully worded statement by the president telegraphs an unambiguous message to the international community, and especially to those nations most concerned with the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The configuration of the Iranian nuclear facility, apparently built in violation of Tehran’s commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency, makes it unsuited for any possible civilian purposes. However, once in operation, it would be ideally suitable for constructing at least one fission nuclear warhead per year.

Once the Iranian ruling elite realized that their secret facility was about to be unveiled, they hurriedly informed the IAEA that, apparently, they had regrettably forgot to inform the UN’s nuclear watchdog that a second uranium processing plant was being built. The fact that it was being constructed underground, below a mountain, was in no way indicative that this was anything other than a peaceful nuclear project, so claim the Iranian authorities.

No serious government believes the Iranian rationalizations, not even the Russians, who up till recently were opposed to imposing severe economic sanctions on Tehran. However, the apparently unassailable intelligence data on the nature of the nuclear facility near Qom has convinced even Moscow that sanctions may be warranted. That apparently is the hope of Washington, with the momentum now in place for a deadline that would place Iran under a sanctions regime by December, unless it is in compliance with all UN resolutions regarding her uranium enrichment program.

As laudable as President Obama’s intentions are on resolving the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy, I believe recent history does not leave grounds for optimism. Economic sanctions are only effective if they are imposed on a regime that is susceptible to domestic public pressure. In the case of a Iran, the fixing of the recent presidential election and brutal suppression of public protest at having their votes disregarded is clear evidence that the theocratic elite in Tehran does not factor in public opinion when formulating policy. Furthermore, the scope of and immense financial investment being made on the Iranian nuclear project, at a time when that nation’s economy is experiencing high unemployment and rampant inflation, is incontrovertible proof that acquiring nuclear weapons, and the missile technology to deliver atomic warheads to distant targets, is that regime’s top priority.

For more than a decade, the international community has imposed draconian economic sanctions on North Korea in an effort to contain Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The North Korean economy is a basket case, yet that reality has in no way restrained the nuclear ambitions of a regime that sees nuclear weapons as its best insurance policy for survival. The North Korean example would seem to suggest that when a dictatorial regime, immune to internal public opinion, is determined to develop nuclear weapons, economic sanctions are an ineffective policy response. There is every likelihood that Iran’s theocratic leadership is similarly immune to economic pressure, and sees diplomacy as merely a delaying tactic, to buy time while Tehran rushes forward with its covert uranium enrichment activity.

If in fact sanctions do not impede Iran’s nuclear goals, what is likely to happen? Based on Israel’s aggressive non-proliferation policy in the Middle East, and how they perceive the Iranian nuclear threat, it is unlikely they will remain passive if it appears that Tehran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. If the only alternative to an Iranian nuclear weapon is an Israeli attack on Iran, there should be no illusions about the Iranian reaction. They are likely to strike back not only at Israel, but at every Western country, most probably by mining the straits of Hormuz and attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The economic crisis the world is currently enduring will be massively exacerbated, with oil prices rising through the stratosphere. It is not inconceivable that a long-term regional war will erupt, while the global economy enters a tailspin.

It is not pleasant to contemplate the strong possibility that economic sanctions will fail to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program. However, the real world of geopolitics is often unpleasant, and frequently ugly. As painful as it is, I hope that Washington is contemplating other options besides economic sanctions. Otherwise, the Obama administration and the international community will, in effect, make a decision that the Israelis should handle the Iranian nuclear problem, and allow all the horrific yet predictable consequences to ensue.